Firstborn (3 page)

The closest I'd ever come to leaving the ranch was when I'd gone to read the sign over the gate, so my heart fluttered when I flew over a split-rail fence marking the end of the property. I passed over a deep, wooded ravine, and then I was out on the open range.

I was used to flying in brief bursts. It was quite a strain to flap along for hours on end, stopping only now and then for a quick bite. But I saw wonders: a railroad train hundreds of cars long; sheep ranches; windmills with perilous blades as long as silos; interstate highways; dammed-up lakes; endless wheat fields waving their golden tassels; towering grain elevators; great rivers with herons and osprey and even occasional human beings fishing in them.

At nightfall I found a ponderosa pine to rest my weary wings. You'd have thought my head would have been full of all the novelties I'd seen, but there only seemed to be room there for Trilby. The tree's familiar vanilla smell helped lull me to sleep, but Trilby quickly appeared in my dreams.

The next day I did more zigging and zagging. Meadowlarks gave me conflicting reports about bluebird sightings. It was dusk before I got a solid lead—from a tanager. She was sure she'd seen a bluebird heading for Butte.

“What's Butte?” I asked.

“A hive of humans. Just follow the highway.”

I turned in for the night on a wooden brace behind a roadside billboard. In the morning I followed the tanager's advice, flying along above the westbound vehicles. At midday my heart leaped at the sight of Trilby perched alone on a telephone wire.

“Tri-i-i-ilby!” I cried, swooping down beside him.

“Maggie?” he said, looking put out. “What on earth are you doing here?”

My heart fell like a dropping. “I . . . I was thinking I might go with you to see the ocean.”

He gave his azure shoulders a shrug. “Well, why not? Though I warn you, we'll get some strange looks—a bluebird and a magpie flying together. And it could be a very long way.”

I'm not sure how much time went by before he said, “Better get going.” When he took off, I didn't budge. He circled overhead a couple of times, then headed west. I couldn't even rotate my head to watch him fly away. It was as if I'd turned to stone.

I didn't leave that telephone wire all night. The highway down below wasn't busy, but every now and then headlights would light up the darkness and an eighteen-wheeler would storm by, ruffling my feathers. When the sun rose, I saw that the pale smudges to the west were snowcapped peaks, not clouds. I tortured myself with images of Trilby flying over them, achingly blue against the snow. My belly was empty, but I was too depressed to search for food. I sat there baking in the sun.

At dusk a herd of black-tailed deer wandered across the road. I knew they must carry ticks, but I didn't have the heart to fly down and check. By nightfall I was delirious, and my feet were cramped from gripping the wire so long. As I was about to pass out, a loud thunk startled me into alertness.

A deer was lying on the shoulder of the road right underneath me: a young doe. The vehicle that had hit her pulled off a little farther down the road, and a human got out of it and inspected the front of his vehicle. But he drove off without coming back to inspect the doe. She wasn't so much as twitching. The next headlights that passed by showed up a sheen of blood on her flank.

As the darkness thickened, the smell of the deer became so overpowering that I finally let go of the wire and dropped down onto the carcass. I took a nibble. Never in my life had I sampled anything so delicious. It was better than the tastiest garbage on the ranch.

I couldn't stop eating, and the feast restored me in spite of myself. The thought of Trilby's indifference was still like a cold claw around my heart, but its grip wasn't quite so paralyzing. I had an urge to tell someone what had happened, to get a little comforting. I could hardly expect Dan to sympathize, so I naturally thought of Jackson.

I spent the next day winging back to the east. That night I slept in a willow tree by a nearly dried-up pond. I got an early start the next morning and spotted the twin silos of the Triple Bar T shortly before midday. Jackson wasn't on the weather vane, so I automatically made for my ponderosa pine. Dan had collected more gimcracks since I'd left, so I could barely fit in the nest. He soon showed up with a paper clip.

“We thought you were dead!” he exclaimed, tossing in his latest find. “Where were you?”

“I took a little trip.”

“A trip?”

“It turns out there's a lot to see outside the ranch.”

“You went off sightseeing for days on end without even telling me?”

He flew off in a huff before I could think of an answer. Not that I had one. Now that I thought about it, I supposed I had been pretty inconsiderate. But the truth was, even though we'd had a clutch of eggs together, Dan didn't mean that much to me. And I knew I didn't mean nearly as much to him as his knickknacks.

I felt differently about Jackson. But in my absence he must have taken to spending more time with Miranda, for he didn't appear on his weather vane all afternoon. I did some reconnaissance. When I crossed paths with Dan—he had a shiny wing nut in his beak—he gave me the cold shoulder. He must have said something to the kids, for I got the same treatment from them. Who could blame them?

I spent that night in the hayloft, falling asleep to the painfully sweet memory of my brief interlude there with Trilby. In the morning I flew up to the cupola, hoping Jackson would come if he saw me. By noon he still hadn't, so I did something I'd never done before: I flew down to his food cache at the base of the cottonwood tree.

I ventured warily into a cavity between two of the tree's roots. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw no sign of Jackson other than a few dark covert feathers lining a bed of matted leaves. There was no food, either. Turning to go, I saw a cross stuck in the earth not far from the tree. Carved at the intersection of the two slats of wood was a crude
M
.

So this was why I'd never run across Miranda. Jackson came down here not to eat but to visit her grave.

I flew back up to the cupola and did something else I'd never done before: I called out his name, loud and clear. A squirrel scampering across the barn roof stopped and looked at me.

“That old crow?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“He got shot a couple of days ago.”

“Excuse me?”

“The smaller human in the red cap was taking potshots at him on the weather vane. Wonder of wonders, he hit him.” The squirrel pointed his bushy tail to the north. “Afraid the bugs are getting at him.”

Somehow I managed to open my wings and glide down over the eaves of the barn. A dark shape lay on the shady ground between a propane tank and a pile of old tires. I landed beside it and hissed:

“Off him!”

The insects ignored me. Most of them were crowded around a wound on Jackson's neck. I plucked the parasites off one by one. Normally I would have eaten them, but since they'd been nibbling on Jackson it seemed disrespectful, so I just spat them away.

Once Jackson was free of vermin, I looked into his right eye. It was cloudy, missing its old gleam. I wondered what his last thought had been.

I grabbed one of his scaly legs in my beak and dragged him a few inches along the ground. I rested. I grabbed the leg again and dragged him a few more inches.

It took a long time, but I finally got him to the corner of the barn. By then we were both pretty dusty. His murderer, Red Cap, was under the cottonwood tree, kicking a ball back and forth with his sister. As the sun lowered in the sky, another human called out that it was dinnertime. The boy and girl just kept kicking the ball. But when the call came again, shriller this time, they abandoned their play and went into the house.

By the time I got Jackson to his hideaway between the cottonwood's roots, the sun was near setting. I arranged him on the leafy bed with his head propped up, facing Miranda's cross, and then I sank down beside him. Now that I'd accomplished my mission, a tide of sorrow gushed over me. Jackson was gone, along with all his wonderful knowledge. And for what? A moment's satisfaction for a wanton boy—a soulless, earthbound creature! It was too cruel and stupid to think of, but I couldn't help myself.

As I stared out at the darkening sky, I began to feel sorry for myself. First my beautiful Trilby had rejected me, and now I'd lost my only friend in the world. I couldn't think what I had to live for and wished I could die along with the daylight.

Fate seemed to hear my thought.

A pair of close-set eyes glinted just outside the hideaway. They belonged to a fox. I was trapped. The only way out was past him. He knew it too. His snout twitched, and something like a grin played across his thin lips. As he let out a low snarl, baring razorlike teeth, I shook all over and tried to hide under Jackson.

With my head wedged between the crow's under feathers and some moldering leaves I heard a strangled yelp. I yanked my head out. The fox was gone. I flew out of there like a shot. Trotting off into the sunset with the fox in his mouth was a silhouette—just like the one on the humans' target.

I LANDED ON JACKSON'S WEATHER
vane with a hammering heart. One second I'd been a goner, fox food, and now here I was, sitting on top of the barn. I took long, slow sips of the still evening air. The western sky was the color of a ripe peach. In the east a nearly full moon was on the rise. The vast space in between was a deep, mysterious blue. Even if there wasn't a bird in the world who cared if I was alive or dead, I was glad to be alive.

Hardly a leaf was stirring on the cottonwood, but the hens were stirring in the henhouse, which was odd at this hour. Soon the cattle were lowing noisily in the pen with the electric fence, and horses whinnied in the paddock. A screen door banged. Earflaps came striding out across the yard. I didn't realize he had a rifle till the crack rang out. The cattle and hens and horses went crazy. The screen door banged again, and out bolted Red Cap and his sister. Earflaps's rifle erupted again. It went off four or five times before the humans trooped back toward the house.

“You really think it was a wolf, Dad?” asked Red Cap.

“Had to be,” said Earflaps.

“Think you got him?”

“We'll have a look-see in the morning. If we didn't, we'll put the word out.”

The humans went back inside. Soon the livestock settled down. Did that mean the wolf was dead? I hoped not, since I hadn't even had a chance to thank him for saving my life. But after the double traumas of Jackson's death and—nearly—my own, I was too exhausted to go searching, barely having the energy to flutter down to the hayloft for the night.

I woke when the cock crowed. The sky had flip-flopped. Now the moon was way over in the west, and the eastern horizon had a peachy glow. I went off to look for the wolf, dead or alive. As I wheeled around the ranch in widening circles, I passed over a steer skeleton, but no wolf carcass. My circling expanded beyond the ranch. The landscape was pretty baked out, but about a mile north of the Triple Bar T's gate I spotted the wolf sleeping on a swath of green in a creek bed. There wasn't much left of the creek at this time of the year. There wasn't much left of the fox either. I landed in an elderberry bush near its remains.

Though this was the first wolf I'd ever gotten a good look at, I could just tell he was a big one. As the sky brightened, I noticed he had a collar around his neck, like the dogs on the ranch, though the wolf's was thicker, with a lump on it. And I noticed that his glossy gray coat had a blue tinge to it.

His legs twitched, and then his eyes flickered open. They had a yellow gleam. When he stood up and shook himself, I almost felt sorry for the fox. This wolf, with his massive hindquarters, his sinewy neck and shoulders, and his long, powerful jaw, was clearly built for killing. He gave the fox remnants a disdainful sniff and took a slurp from the creek. As he started to trot away, I called after him:

“Hey. Thank you.”

He looked back over his shoulder. The menacing glint in his eyes had me crouching in takeoff position.

“For what?” he growled.

I pointed my beak at the fox. “He was about to kill me when you grabbed him.”

“You're welcome to him,” the wolf said, and turned and trotted off to the north.

In fact, I was famished, and once the wolf was out of sight, I flew down and sampled the fox. He wasn't quite as good as the doe, but the meat was still fresh, and there was a certain satisfaction in eating someone who'd almost eaten me.

I was just finishing my breakfast when I heard rifle shots. The wolf came bounding back down the creek bed. I darted to the top of the elderberry bush. The wolf stopped nearby and crouched, the muscles tense on his back.

“The rancher at the Triple Bar T spread the word about you,” I said, glad to see he hadn't been wounded.